Russia has carried out a wave of attacks on Ukraine, killing 18 people and injuring more than 130, Volodymyr Zelenskiy has said, with a sports club in central Kyiv one of several civilian buildings damaged.
Making his nightly video address on Tuesday, the Ukrainian president said more than 200 sites were struck, including 139 dwellings.
The early morning strikes targeted the Ukrainian capital and Kharkiv, with air raid sirens going off at 5.43am local time. About an hour later came a series of explosions and burning debris fell from the sky.
Valeriy Zaluzhnyi, Ukraine’s commander-in-chief, said air defences had shot down 21 of 41 enemy missiles while others got through. Seven people were killed and 51 wounded when an apartment block in Kharkiv was hit and caught fire.
In recent weeks Russia has stepped up its attacks on Ukraine’s second city, using short-range ballistic missiles allegedly supplied by North Korea. Kharkiv’s mayor, Ihor Terekhov, said rescuers were searching for survivors and discovered the body of a nine-year-old girl under rubble. Her mother was also killed.
Russia struck Kharkiv with Kh-22 missile, large anti-ship missile known for its low accuracy and carrying a nearly one-ton warhead. This war crime is especially cynical following Russia's UN statements yesterday about brotherly nations. pic.twitter.com/slHwIvBe1M
— Maria Avdeeva (@maria_avdv) January 23, 2024
Video showed the moment a nearly one-tonne rocket struck, sending a plume of black smoke above a snowy urban skyline. A couple watched, hugging each other, as their building burned.
In central Kyiv, a Russian projectile landed on the roof of the Lokomotiv sports club, close to the southern railway station. It shattered balconies and windows in a 15-storey block opposite and in a dormitory used by railway workers, families and students. Three other districts were targeted.
“It was fucking scary,” said one resident, Margerita. “There was a metallic sound and then our windows blew in. I found glass on my face. The Russians are crazy. They don’t care about human life.
“I really hope that the world helps us. We need more support because our enemy is more powerful than America. In my opinion the US is secretly afraid of Russia.”
Zelenskiy described Tuesday’s strikes as “deliberate terror” meted out by Russia against ordinary civilians and residential buildings. “Unfortunately, there are casualties and deaths.”
Zelenskiy added: “Our heroic rescuers, those who are always the first to arrive at the sites of enemy shelling, despite all the difficulties, continue their very important work for the sake of saving people.”
For now, Ukraine is able to shoot down many of the long-range weapons fired by Russia. But the Kremlin’s apparent winter strategy is to exhaust Kyiv’s supplies of anti-aircraft missiles and ultimately knock out its highly effective US-supplied air defence systems.
The White House and Pentagon have warned they will soon be unable to supply Ukrainian Patriot batteries with interceptor missiles. Republicans in Congress are blocking $61bn (£48bn) in military assistance – a strategy leaving Ukrainian cities increasingly vulnerable, officials in Kyiv say.
The strikes rocked the heart of the capital. On Tuesday morning, locals swept up broken glass and checked damage to their cars. Several were destroyed.
The blast swept through Lokomotiv’s fan shop and wrecked the inside of the team’s club house. Its locker rooms were filled with rubble, next to a staircase decorated with signed and framed football shirts.
One resident, Natalia, said she woke her four-year-old daughter, Sofia, when she heard the alarm and took her to a basement shelter.
The explosion blew in the window in Sofia’s room and dumped jagged shards of glass on her bed. “We always follow the alarms, thank God,” Natalia said.
Natalia’s husband, Oleg, said several people in their hostel were hit by flying glass, including two students. He said: “Kyiv is at least well defended. They have it worse in Kharkiv because it’s close to the Russian border.”
Moscow’s relentless airstrikes on Ukrainian civilians meant there was no prospect of peace talks, or negotiations with Vladimir Putin, he said.
He added: “The Soviets arrested my great-grandfather and put him in a gulag in the Solovetsky Islands. They said he was a Ukrainian kulak [wealthy peasant]. He died there. Russia has been oppressing us for centuries. They are our sworn enemy.”
Kyiv’s mayor, Vitali Klitschko, said 22 people were injured on Tuesday, with 13 taken to hospital. One woman was resuscitated. Rescue workers found an unexploded warhead in an apartment in the Sviatoshyn district. They evacuated residents from a five-storey building and loaded the bomb on to a truck using a crane.
In the city of Pavlohrad, in the central-eastern Dnipropetrovsk region, at least one person was killed and one wounded.
Russia acknowledged its armed forces had carried out a “group strike” using what it said were “high-precision, long-range air and ground-based weapons”. It claimed it had targeted Ukraine’s “military-industrial complex” and sites used to produce missiles and ammunition.
Denise Brown, the UN’s humanitarian coordinator for Ukraine, called the attacks “brutal and indiscriminate”.
She added: “The strikes caused damage to civilian buildings just next to the United Nations office in Kyiv. They are yet another bitter reminder of the devastation, suffering and distress that Russia’s invasion is causing for millions of people in Ukraine.”
